Alienists, who study the matter exactly, probably know more of human vanity and its effects than do ordinary men.

Caswall's mental disturbance was not hard to identify.

Every asylum is full of such cases--men and women, who, naturally selfish and egotistical, so appraise to themselves their own importance that every other circumstance in life becomes subservient to it.

The disease supplies in itself the material for self-magnification.
When the decadence attacks a nature naturally proud and selfish and vain, and lacking both the aptitude and habit of self-restraint, the development of the disease is more swift, and ranges to farther limits.
It is such persons who become inbued with the idea that they have the attributes of the Almighty--even that they themselves are the Almighty.
Mimi had a suspicion--or rather, perhaps, an intuition--of the true state of things when she heard him speak, and at the same time noticed the abnormal flush on his face, and his rolling eyes.

There was a certain want of fixedness of purpose which she had certainly not noticed before--a quick, spasmodic utterance which belongs rather to the insane than to those of intellectual equilibrium.